by: Amanda Rioux
- Why do we grade for participation?
- Does grading for participation, as a practice, have any inherent value?
- What is participation, anyway?
These are the types of questions that drove Critel’s research. Although she never got the chance to answer those questions in full, many of her colleagues, including Obermark, took up the reins after her untimely death. Obermark continues to interrogate these guiding questions, further exploring how we define “participation,” and how to assess whether or not assigning a grade to participation serves any functional purpose.
Throughout the chapters in the book the authors have compiled a set of problematic aspects surrounding the practice of grading classroom participation. These have included:
- No clear definition of what is–and is not–“participation”
- Unstated assumptions instructors make about what they think their students understand about participation
- A lack of input from students themselves concerning the topic
It is this final point which Obermark focuses in on in their chapter, “A Curation of Student Voices on Participation in the Writing Classroom.” Picking up where Critel left off, Obermark seeks out to interview students to gather more insight on their thoughts and concerns surrounding participation–particularly in a writing classroom.
Obermark conducts a case study which includes interviewing students, recording and compiling their responses, and making an assessment based on those responses. One of the most concerning findings is how assigning a grade to participation puts the focus more on the act of participating, and less on the retention of information. Students find themselves so concerned with earning grade points that they “participate” in meaningless ways just to earn points, making the process more quantitative than qualitative.
If this is found to be a more widely-held thought process among students, then should we even be grading participation at all? What kind of value could be derived from participating just for participation’s sake?
Ultimately, Obermark remarks how “[their] findings echo Critel’s in some ways, [while their] data shows how the students move the commonplace in new directions and provide insight teachers alone could not” (Obermark).
This type of practice would serve well in our own classrooms. As I previously mentioned in my last post, I brainstormed with my students at the beginning of the semester to get some of their ideas on what constitutes “participation,” since the COVID-19 pandemic–and mandatory quarantining for anyone exposed to the virus–meant we would not be grading “participation” in the traditional manner.
To recap, the ideas my students had on what counts as “participation” included:
- Coming to class prepared
- Asking questions, whether during class, after class, or through email
- Participating in discussion board posts
- Completing assignments as instructed
Personally, I do not believe that only one party should have all the say in how participation in a classroom is defined. It should be a more democratic process where instructor and students work together to compose a classroom charter where participation is defined via classroom council; anyone who wants to have a say should be allowed to do so, and students should be free to challenge the instructor’s definition of “participation.”
As Obermark says in the chapter, this sort of socratic method for defining participation would “allow scholars and teachers to hear [students’] experiences, concerns, and suggestions.”